Sharp & Strong
by Immicolia
Summary: Growing up Satellite is never easy and it's easier to survive if you harden yourself.  Bolger, from Zero Reverse up until he meets Pearson and a vague brush of beyond.  Implied Pearson x Bolger.


_One day my brain decided to vomit out a good portion of my headcanon for Bolger, which is extensive because I am insane and obsessive and love Pearson and Bolger forever for some stupid reason. And as such, we have this. Warnings for mild sexual content. Vagueish Pearson/Bolger._

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Domino City was a surprising sort of a melting pot by Japan's standards, and when he was small (before the world came apart) he never really thought all that much about his obviously mixed heritage and his very western sounding name. He was ten, things like that didn't matter yet simply because none of the other kids paid that much attention to the fact either. He was just Jamie and he liked sports and thought girls were weird and more often than not his hands and knees were scraped up from climbing around where he shouldn't. Nowhere overly dangerous, just foolish to the point where his mother would scold and punish him although never harshly enough that it was a deterrent from further adventures.

When he's ten and three quarters he swears the whole world is torn to shreds. He knows now it was only Domino itself that was rocked by a massive earthquake, but he was ten (almost eleven) and at that age the city pretty much _was_ his entire world. So the world came apart and daddy never came home and he started to learn quite quickly how cold and hard things could be. How easy it is to go hungry. How the strong will always snatch things from the weak and someday he's going to be big enough that he'll never be weak again. Not ever.

His mother stole to keep them from starving. He didn't know it at first, but when the Security men come to take her away (not caring how much he screams and fights and claws in his attempts to stop them) it becomes obvious. You have to be strong and clever and vicious to survive because if you're not you lose everything and no one will care.

When he's twelve and a half (three days after they take his mother away) he stops being Jamie. Stops being anything but a ghost because ghosts can't be hurt. His hands and knees once again scraped and cut from clambering around where he shouldn't and this time it _is_ dangerous but it doesn't matter because he has nothing to lose. If the choice is starve or break his neck, at least breaking his neck will be instant. He's sharp and fast and more than a little bit wild and even though he's nowhere near big enough to fight yet, he's quick enough to run and not get caught which is almost as good. Speed is a sort of strength of its own and it keeps him safe because he hears whispers sometimes when he drifts in amongst the other kids who ghost around in the alleys. About kids who get grabbed and who never come back and there's one boy who's about fifteen who got grabbed once and somehow got away. Who's Seen Things and was made to Do Things although he'll never talk about it save for cryptic whispers paired up with a thousand mile stare.

He swears up and down that he'd never be like that boy, even if sometimes his stare is almost the same.

There's a sort of comfort in numbers, and after a while he stops being a silent little ghost and starts being Bolger. The other kids want a name to call him by so that's what he gives them because he just can't be Jamie anymore and he tries to fit as well as he can in a group that is all misfits to begin with. And it's okay for a while. They pool their talents and they survive. The clever ones plan and the fast ones steal and the big ones fight. An awkward little tribe of half-wild children growing up into very wild adolescents, gnawing away at edges of whatever passes for society in Satellite.

He's almost fourteen when he's informed that he shouldn't be finding girls weird anymore (although he really still does, just in a different way than his ten-year-old self did) after he stumbles across a couple of the (barely) older kids fucking on a dirty old mattress. The whole tangle of limbs that it involved looking strange and uncomfortable and exciting all at once (strange, uncomfortable, and excited also being an excellent way to describe exactly how stumbling across the pair of them left him feeling, with a side of flushed and confused) and he gets cursed at and called a creep and then laughed at and teased by turns when they realize he's there and that he has no idea what they're up to. And he shrugs and grumbles that he doesn't care and that it looks stupid anyway and what the hell's the fun in sweaty, naked, wrestling around.

The girl's laughter is high and musical and follows him for what feels like days, along with the image of the sweaty, breathless tangle of their bodies and he spends the nights tossing and turning, his skin feeling so tight that he wants to scream until an older boy takes pity on him and teaches him about jerking off late one night. He has red hair and a quiet smile and in later years Bolger wonders if that one boy made such a strong positive impression that it made it easier for him to trust Pearson a little bit down the line. But that bit of introspection is for when he's much, much older. For that one night there is nothing beyond his breath coming in ragged little gasps and that reassuring murmur against his ear and the way it feels like all his bones have turned to water after he's come.

(and sometimes he tries to remember just what the hell happened to that kid, or his name at the very least, but there were so many faces that moved in and out of that little group so fast he can never quite remember for sure)

He leaves after a few years. No one stays past fifteen it seems and he's no different. He leaves with a couple other kids who kept in touch with a guy who left a few years before they did and they all wind up tangled in one of the gangs. Running around Zone D picking fights and drinking and smoking and fucking their brains out, although Bolger considers himself different from the rest of them. Staying a little bit separate and always poised to run, just as he's always been since the day he stopped being Jamie, although he still nods and agrees and does whatever is asked of him. From duels to running packages. Whatever it takes to stay alive.

On his fifteenth birthday he gets a tattoo. He's sloppy drunk (they all are) and barely aware when a few of the other guys drag him into a scummy little hole in the wall for some ink and he sort of remembers pointing out a design and stripping off his shirt. It probably being nothing more than dumb luck and a blessedly hearty immune system that stops the damn thing from getting infected, let alone what kind of horrible blood-borne diseases he could have caught. But he somehow survives unscathed save for the grotesque mess of ink curling between his shoulderblades. Something he only catches bare glimpses of in his reflection, a garish blur of colour on the paler skin of his back.

He doesn't stay with the gang long. It's too constrictive. Something he could get tangled in too tightly and never get away from and the thought of being without an escape plan scares the shit out of him. So he leaves in the dead of the night, becoming a ghost again. And it may be cowardly but survival has always been his only concern and damn how it looks to the rest of the world. The only flaw in this plan being that it's a hell of a lot harder to be a ghost at sixteen than it was at twelve. People notice a wild and wary-eyed teenager skulking around and wonder what he's up to. And he gets into fights and nearly gets picked up by Security (just like his mother) more than once and it's his knuckles that are cut and scrapped now instead of his palms and knees. Finally big enough to fight and still quick enough to run.

He gets sick of running after a while though. Especially from Security. They're all power-drunk assholes who get their jollies off of stomping down the weak. Not that there's any noble sort of altruism in his urge to stomp them right back. It's anger and frustration, pure and simple. He's tired of running, he just wants to fight until his knuckles are bloody and broken and his arms are too sore to move anymore. And there are days he wonders what would have happened if Pearson hadn't found him right before he'd gone off. If he'd gotten into that fight he'd been itching to have. If he would have lived long enough to see the inside of the Facility or been put down like a rabid animal within minutes.

It doesn't matter, though. Because then there's Pearson. Calm and steady and not flinching in the face of any of his outbursts. Casually offering help in a way that doesn't seem like it. And he'll never know why he didn't storm off in the other direction that day. Why it was so easy to fall into a routine that was more comfortable than confining and terrifying.

Why he let himself fall in love for the first time in his life.

There are no answers. Just eight years where life wasn't so bad. Where it was as close to ideal as life in Satellite could be. Eight years that fell apart in one vicious argument and an impossible duel because no matter what, no matter how many years of calm and quiet, he will always be this half-wild thing more inclined to lash out and destroy and run than trust and believe.

After he smashes and sets fire to one of the few good things in his life (except he _had_ to, because no one can be trusted not even Pearson) he can't be just Bolger anymore. His actions pull him out of the sucking cesspit that Satellite is, but it's impossible to go by just one name in the City. Not if he wants to be something and the men from Senrigan explain this to him like he's something exceptionally slow witted. Asking with needling insistence what his full name is.

He doesn't know what to say at first, because he still can't be Jamie. Pearson is (was) the only person he ever told that name to After and he can't speak it aloud again. Not to these men. So he stutters for a moment and they stare at him like he's something low and worthless until he finally manages to spit out, "James." The name going on all the official looking paperwork that will get him into Neo Domino and it doesn't feel real. There is a surreal sort of disconnect in everything from meeting with Senrigan's head (the woman cool and timeless and informing him absently that the people who offered him the contract for the engines were acting out of turn and the company has no interest in expanding to such things but they'll gladly deal with him should he strike out on his own) to those first awkward touch-and-go months of trying to build a business of his own. But in the end it's all the same. You still have to be strong and clever and vicious to survive because if you're not you lose everything and no one will care. And he fights just as hard as he always has.

It's the only thing he knows.


End file.
